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Publish creatives to QA

Learn how to perform QA testing in the QA certification study guide. The guide walks you through the testing process to ensure quality creatives and accurate reporting when your campaign is live. When complete, you can take a test to get certified, and you'll be added to the list of certified users in the Rich Media Gallery.

Whether you're certified or not, you can also choose to perform your own QA tests using the QA Helper extension. Learn more

After previewing your creative, proceed to the Publish step of the Creatives tab workflow and publish the creative to begin the QA testing process. You can publish multiple creatives at a time within the same campaign.

The Publish step includes a list of creatives in the campaign, with the current creative on top, plus the format type and the creative's dimensions and status.

Uncheck the "Send a notification to DoubleClick's QA team" option. Optionally, you can add the email address or addresses of your own QA team.

Enter your QA team member's email address in the Notify field. In the CC field, enter any other applicable contacts (such as traffickers) that you want notified when the creatives are published.

Click Publish to QA to change the status of creatives to Published, and start the QA testing process.

Your QA team tests the creatives and emails you when the review is complete. An alert icon appears next to creatives that can't be published. Hover over the icon for an explanation.

Publish creatives to your target platform after they're approved

After QA review is complete, you can use the QA options button to approve and publish creatives. The available options are:

Approve: Marks the selected creatives as "approved" and emails an approval notification to traffickers.

Approve and Submit: Approves the creatives and directly submits them to DoubleClick.

Submit Approved: Submits all the creatives in the current campaign that you've approved but haven't submitted yet. (These creatives have a status of QA Approved. The status changes to Trafficked after you submit them.)

If you're pushing a creative that was previously submitted to DCM Trafficking or DFP, the trafficker will be notified by email that an updated version of the creative is available. For more information, see Different versions of the same creative.

If you're not sure whether or not your client has DoubleClick QA Support, please contact the media agency or party responsible for buying media. You can always perform your own QA using Studio's QA guidelines.

DoubleClick's QA team reviews published creatives and emails you when the review is complete and creatives are ready for trafficking. An alert icon appears next to creatives that can't be published. Hover over the icon for an explanation.

The creative shop is responsible for providing the QA team with any special notes or requests using the Message field in the Publish tab of the Studio UI before you click Publish to QA. Use these codes for such requests:

Message code

Explanation

Pre-QA, do not push

You want the creative to be reviewed by the QA team but not pushed to DCM. Use this code if the creative is completely built out in Studio but full creative approval on your client side is pending.

Ignore revision X

Replace "X" with a short description if you want the QA team to ignore a previous revision and pass QA. Use if there's an aspect of the creative that didn't pass DoubleClick QA but is known to be able to pass the site specs on the actual media plan.

Check for X

Replace "X" with the actual item to check for if you have a special behavior request to check for. For example, macros added to the end of clickthrough URLs, and checking that a specific buggy behavior is no longer occurring.

Check for media plan specs

Ask the QA Team to check against specific media plan specs rather than a general LCD. You must provide a link to the media plan specs as a Google doc URL or a downloadable link.

Campaign run date is X

Include the live date for the campaign if it's available. Our QA team can't promise that QA will occur faster than standard turnaround, but we will prioritize according to the live date.

Urgent QA

Standard turnaround times still apply, but we will do our best to prioritize this QA request.

Bypass QA

Our QA team will bypass any QA review entirely and push the creative to DCM for trafficking. The creative shop is fully liable for any site errors and live issues that occur as a result of bypassing our QA process.

This process is in place to prevent live issues and lost revenue, so we strongly discourage making this request except in the following extreme cases:

Live date is the next morning, so there's no time to complete our one-business-day QA before the site needs to review live tags.

The DoubleClick QA team thoroughly tests your creatives to make sure that they function properly and that they conform to site specifications. See Test your creatives for a detailed list of QA checks. These include:

OS and browser testing
QA checks to make sure that your creative functions with different operating systems, and browsers. For the standard OS and browser combinations that QA tests on, see Test your creatives. Older and newer browser andOS checks are considered by request.

Site spec requirements
The QA team checks creatives against DoubleClick's Basic QA checklist. The team can do a custom spec check if you provide a site-specific spec document.

Custom tracking
If you provide the QA team with a specific list of tracking to check, QA can check this too. If no tracking brief is provided, QA makes sure that standard metrics included in the Rich Media component are accounted for.

Click Publish to QA to change the status of creatives to Published.

You'll receive a QA report when testing is complete. If QA approves your creatives, they are automatically pushed to the associated target platform unless specified otherwise in the QA message code.

The QA process

Within 24 business hours of submitting creatives to the DoubleClick QA team, you'll receive a QA report indicating whether your creatives were approved.

Approved creatives are pushed to the associated DCM or DFP advertiser's creative library for trafficking.

If any creatives are rejected, the QA report lists the necessary revisions. After you revise any rejected creatives, republish them in Studio.

QA report

The accompanying QA report includes:

Approved and rejected creatives

Preview links and live tag links, if any

Creative bugs and revisions, including the creative's format as well as visible and functionality-related bugs with the steps to reproduce them

Notes and suggestions, including nice-to-have features and possible violations of the specification document according to our best practices guidelines

Your QA team can only review creatives with a status of Published. If you publish a creative to QA and then edit it, the creative returns to a status of In development, and QA can't review it.